WAITING
If Pilate had uttered the sardonic remark "What is truth?" in Boreham's
presence, he would certainly have compelled that weary official to wait
for definite enlightenment. Boreham would have explained to him that
although Absolute Truth (if there is such a thing) lies, like our
Destiny, in the lap of the gods, he, Boreham, had a thoroughly reliable
stock of useful truths with which he could supply any inquirer. Indeed
to Boreham, the discussing of truths was a comparatively simple matter.
Truths were of two kinds. Firstly, they were what he, himself, was
convinced of at the moment of speaking; and secondly, they were _not_
what the man next him believed in. Boreham found intolerable any
assertion made by people he knew. He knew them! _Voila!_ But he felt he
could very fairly well trust opinions expressed by the native
inhabitants of--say Pomerania--or still better--India.
Boreham had already some acquaintances in Oxford to whom he spoke, as he
said himself, "frankly and fearlessly," and who tolerated him, whenever
they had time to listen to him, because he was entirely harmless and
merely tiresome. But he was not surprised (it had occurred before) that
the Warden refused his invitation to lunch at Chartcote. The ladies had
accepted; and when Boreham said "the ladies," on this occasion he was
thinking solely of Mrs. Dashwood. Lady Dashwood had accepted the
invitation because it was given verbally. She made no purely social
engagements. The Warden, himself, did not entertain during the war, and
the only engagements were those of business, or of hospitality of an
academic nature.
The day following May Dashwood's arrival was entirely uneventful. The
Warden was mostly invisible. May was as bright as she had been on her
arrival. Gwen went about wide-eyed and wistful, and spoke spasmodically.
Lady Dashwood was serene and satisfied. A shy Don accompanied by a very
nice, untidy wife, appeared at lunch, and they were introduced by the
Warden as Mr. and Mrs. Stockwell. Mr. Stockwell was struck dumb at
finding himself seated next to Mrs. Dashwood, a type of female little
known to him. But May bravely taking him in hand, he recovered his
powers of speech and became epigrammatic and sparkling. This
round-shouldered, spectacled scholar, with a large nose and receding
chin, poured out brilliant observations, subtile and suggestive, and had
an apparently inexhaustible store of the literature of Europe. He sat
sideways in his chair and spoke into May's sympathetic ear, giving an
occasional swift appealing glance at the Warden, who came within the
range of his vision.
How Stockwell ate his food was impossible to discover. He seemed to give
automatic twiddles to his fork and apparently swallowed something
afterwards, for when Robinson's underling, Robinson _petit fils_,
removed Stockwell's plates, they contained only wreckage.
The Warden, aided by Lady Dashwood, struggled courteously with Mrs.
Stockwell. She was obliged to talk across Gwendolen, who spent her time
silently observing Mrs. Dashwood.
Mrs. Stockwell had pathetic pretensions to intellectuality, based on a
masterly acquaintance with the names of her husband's books and the fact
that she lived in the academic circle. She had drooped visibly at the
first sight of her hostess and Mrs. Dashwood, but was soon put at her
ease by Lady Dashwood, who deftly drew her away from vague hints at the
possession of learning into talk about her children. Gwen, watching the
Warden and Mrs. Dashwood across Mrs. Stockwell's imitation lace front,
could not be moved to speech. To any one in the secret there was written
on her face two absorbing questions: "Am I engaged or not?" "Is she
trying to oust me?"
The Warden's enigmatic eyes held no information in them. He looked at
her gravely when he did look, and--that was all. Was _he_ waiting to
know whether he was engaged or not? Gwen doubted it. He would be sure to
know everything. He would know. Think of all those books in the library!
Supposing he had found that letter--suppose he _had_ read it? No, if he
_had_, he would have looked not merely grave, but angry!
When the ladies rose from the table, Stockwell rose too, reluctantly and
as if waking from a pleasant dream. He stared in a startled way at the
Warden, who moved to open the door; he looked as if about to
spring--then refrained, and resigning himself to the unmistakable
decision of the Fates, he remained standing, staring down at the
table-cloth through his spectacles, with his cheeks flushed and his
heart glad.
Mrs. Stockwell passed out of the room in front of May Dashwood,
gratified, warm and trying to conceal the backs of her boots.
Finally the Stockwells went away, and then Lady Dashwood took her niece
to the Magdalen walk. There among the last shreds of autumn, and in that
muzzy golden sunshine of Oxford, they walked and talked with the
constraint of Gwen's presence.
At tea two or three people called, but the Warden did not appear even
for a hasty cup. At dinner an old pupil of the Warden's--lamed by the
war--occupied the attention of the little party.
Gwen's spirits rose at the sight of a really young man, but she
remembered her mother's admonition and did not make any attempt to
attract his attention beyond opening her eyes now and then suddenly and
widely and with an ecstasy of interest at some invisible object just
above his head. Whether the youthful warrior's imagination was excited
by this "passage of arms" Gwen never knew, because the Warden took his
pupil off to the library after dinner, and did not even bring him into
the drawing-room to bid farewell.
In the quiet of the drawing-room Gwen fell into thought. She wondered
whether the Warden expected her to come and knock on his library door
and walk in and tell him that she really did want to be married to him?
Or had he read that letter and----? Why, she had thought all this over a
hundred times, and was no farther on than she had been before.
After playing the Reverie by Slapovski, which Mrs. Dashwood had not yet
heard, and which she expressed a desire to hear, Gwen settled down to
knitting a sock. She had been knitting that sock for five months. It was
surprising how small the foot was, at least the toe part; the heel
indeed was ample. She had followed the directions with great care, and
yet the stupid thing would come out wrong. It was irritating to see Mrs.
Dashwood knitting away at such a pace. It made Gwen giddy to look at her
hands. Lady Dashwood took up a book and read passages aloud. This was so
intolerably dull that Gwen found it difficult to keep her eyes open. It
is always more tiring when nothing is going on than when plenty of
things are going on!
Lady Dashwood had just finished reading a passage and looked up to make
a remark to May Dashwood, when she became aware of Gwen's face.
"My dear, you looked just like a melancholy peach. Go to bed!"
Gwen smiled and tumbled her pins into her knitting. She rose and said
"Good night," glad to be released. Outside the drawing-room she stood
holding her breath to hear if there was any sound audible from the
library. She heard nothing. She moved over the soft carpet and listened
again, at the door. She could hear the Warden's deep, masculine
voice--like the vibration of an organ, and then a higher voice, but what
they said Gwen could not tell. She turned away and went up to bed. She
was beginning to lose that feeling of not being afraid of the Warden. He
was becoming more and more what he had been at first, an impressive and
alarming personage, a human being entirely remote from her understanding
and experience. At moments during dinner when she had glanced at him, he
had seemed to her to be like a handsomely carved figure animated by some
living force completely unknown to her. That such an incomprehensible
being should become her husband was surely unlikely--if not impossible!
Gwen's thoughts became more and more confused. Notwithstanding this
confusion in what (if compelled to describe it) she would have called
her soul, she closed her eyes and settled upon her pillow. She was
conscious that she was disappointed and not happy. Then she suddenly
became indifferent to her fate--saw in her mind's eye a hat--it absorbed
her. The hat was lying on a chair. It was trimmed like some other hat.
Then the hat disappeared, and Gwen was asleep.
As soon as Gwendolen had left the drawing-room Lady Dashwood closed her
book and looked at her niece.
"Now," said Lady Dashwood, "I begin to think that I was unnecessarily
alarmed about Jim. But it may be because you are here--giving me moral
support." Lady Dashwood spoke the words "moral support" with great
firmness. Having once said it and seen that it was wrong, she meant to
stick to it.
"I wonder," began Mrs. Dashwood, and then she remained silent and looked
hard at her knitting.
Lady Dashwood still stared at her niece. But May did not conclude her
sentence, if indeed she had meant to say any more.
"Why, you haven't noticed anything?" asked Lady Dashwood.
"Nothing!" said May, and she knitted on.
"To-day," said Lady Dashwood, "Jim has been practically invisible except
at meals, but you've no idea how busy he is just now. All one's old
ideas are in the melting-pot," she went on, "and Jim has schemes. He is
full of plans. He thinks there is much to be done, in Oxford, with
Oxford--nothing revolutionary--but a lot that is evolutionary."
Mrs. Dashwood dropped her knitting to listen, though she could have
heard quite well without doing this.
"Imagine!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood, with a little burst of anger, "what
a man like Jim, a scholar, a man of business, an organiser, what on
earth he would do with a wife like Gwendolen Scott! The idea is absurd."
"The absurd often happens," said May, and as she said this she took up
her knitting again with such a jerk that her ball of wool tumbled to the
floor and began rolling; and being a tight ball it rolled some distance
sideways from May's chair in the direction of the far distant door. She
gave the wool a little tug, but the ball merely shook itself, turned
over and released still more wool.
"Very well, remain there if you prefer that place," said May, and as she
spoke there came a slight noise at the door.
Both ladies looked to see who was coming in. It was the Warden. He held
a cigar in his hand, a sign (Lady Dashwood knew it) that he intended
merely to bid them "Good night," and retire again to his library. But he
now stood in the half-light with his hand on the door, and looked
towards the glow of the hearth where the two ladies sat alone, each
lighted by a tall, electric candle stand on the floor. And as he looked
at this little space of light and warmth he hesitated.
Then he closed the door behind him and came in.